Dave Roberts said earlier this season that the Dodgers could bar certain players from using ABS challenges if they didn’t exercise sound judgment.
For Andy Pages, that moment has arrived.
In Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday, Pages made the ill-advised decision to challenge a two-strike pitch in his first at-bat that was confirmed as an obvious strike.
That left the Dodgers with just one more challenge the rest of the game — a costly mistake that marked Pages’ latest failure with MLB’s newly instituted ABS system this year.
“We talked a lot this year about Andy’s success rate or lack thereof [with ABS],” Roberts said, after Pages lost a team-high 14 challenges this year and had a 44% success rate that ranked fifth-worst among the club’s hitters (minimum five challenges).
“I didn’t revisit it before Game 1 yesterday, so that’s my fault,” Roberts added. “I did have a conversation today. So, yeah, we’ve managed that one going forward.”
Does that mean the Dodgers have told Pages not to use challenges now?
“Yes,” Roberts answered flatly.
Utilizing the ABS system, of course, was one of the few things Pages didn’t do well this year.
In the regular season, he earned a first career All-Star selection while batting .274 with 23 home runs, 85 RBIs and a .811 OPS.
He also cemented himself as one of the top center fielders in the sport, providing enough all-around production to lead all Dodgers position players with 4.5 wins above replacement, according to Fangraphs (even in just 134 games played).
However, October was always going to pose a test for the burgeoning 25-year-old, and not just because he only recently returned from a fractured hand that sidelined him for much of September.
In last year’s playoffs, Pages endured a nearly historic postseason slump. He went just 4-for-51 in 16 games. He struck out 11 times without hitting a home run. And though he had a couple highlight moments — hitting the chopper that led to Orion Kerkering’s NLDS-clinching error against the Phillies, and trucking teammate Kiké Hernández for his iconic catch against the Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series — he had nonetheless lost his spot in the starting lineup by the end of the team’s World Series run.
How he would respond this fall loomed as a question all year.
That’s why Saturday’s ABS challenge was so alarming, serving as one of several signs to Roberts that Pages was “trying to do too much” during his 0-for-4, three-strikeout Game 1 performance.
“I just want to see him kind of slow down a little bit,” Roberts said. “Because, again, he came into this postseason really good.”
Moving forward, he will have at least one less dynamic to worry about.
For now, he’s been given the red light on ABS challenges.
